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SRS Live on Net?

By Martin Langfield
Reuters

Contributed by Judy Osborne and Dana Denise Bourne
Miami
July 30, 1998

First it was childbirth, then a scandal involving faux virgins -- now a Florida company says it plans to broadcast a sex-change operation live on the Internet.

"This is not a hoax," Jonathan Ogden, chief technology officer of privately-held Calypso Productions Int Inc., told Reuters in an interview Thursday.

Ogden said the company's Calypso Health division planned to broadcast live over the Internet a six-hour surgical procedure in November in which a Florida resident would be transformed from a man into a woman.

He said Calypso Productions had "been developing pay per call and Internet brands since 1990, including adult website brands, and this site is our foray into the health and medicine arena ... this is the launch of Calypso Health."

The patient had already been planning to undergo the operation before reaching an agreement with the company to broadcast it, he added by telephone from the company's base in Tequesta, Florida.

He declined to reveal more about the patient, who he said would be available for interviews next week. The operation will take place in London, England, and Calypso was not paying for it though it would provide the people and equipment for the broadcast, he added.

"She is very interested in doing this because she will probably become the spokesperson at least for the time being for transgender individuals, and it is an opportunity for her to educate the public and other transgender individuals," Ogden said.

The road has not been smooth for such Internet ventures and their participants.

Earlier this month two alleged 18-year-olds invited the world to watch them lose their virginity online but admitted last week that they were in fact neither 18 nor virgins but actors seeking a break. They had no plans to have sex together.

The company hired to provide the computers needed to make the event happen, Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), said the plan was a hoax dreamed up to make money. IEG said viewers would be charged $5 and then not shown any sex.

The event, IEG President Seth Warshavsky said, was aimed at fooling more people than Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama "War of the Worlds," which convinced many Americans that Martians had invaded New Jersey.

The mastermind behind the affair, Ken Tipton, who used the psuedonym Oscar Wells in promoting his scheme, called it an "Internet soap opera," denied he had hoaxed anyone and said he planned to sue IEG.

In June this year, a Florida woman gave birth live on the Internet in an event that attracted worldwide attention. But the publicity worked against her.

Elizabeth Ann Oliver, 40, was identified only as "Elizabeth" during the broadcast. A newspaper, curious about her identity, discovered she and her husband had lengthy criminal records on bad check charges in several states and published the story. She surrendered to police on July 1.

Ogden said his company had in fact been in touch with Tipton to discuss providing the technology for his virgins venture but withdrew for business reasons before becoming aware of the full nature of the project.

Tipton told Reuters by telephone on Thursday that he could not rule out that Calypso may have called him but said the company's name was not familiar to him.

Ogden said the technologies Calypso Productions had mastered in running adult websites, such as videostreaming, electronic commerce facilities and bandwidth allocation, "are now going to be utilized for more mainstream types of content."

Calypso Productions seeks to make a profit, he said, and is considering measures such as charging those who log on to the broadcast or running advertisements.

"We are not a charity," he said. He declined to give details of the company's revenues, citing its privately-held nature.

The companies' websites-www.calypsoproductions.com and www.calypsohealth.com-contained no information when inspected on Thursday beyond a corporate slogan, contact numbers, e-mail and an address in Tequesta.

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